


Prove all my hypotheses

by estel_willow, mandsangelfox



Series: At Our Swiftest Speed [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 16:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3857317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandsangelfox/pseuds/mandsangelfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The quick flutter faint like a hummingbird's wings. Faint, so faint, but there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prove all my hypotheses

There were moments when Steve Rogers questioned everything he ever stood for because more often than not he found that in his blind faith he'd either been lied to or missed something which was right under his nose. Now was another prime example of that as he rounded on Dr. Helen Cho under the impression that what she'd frantically emailed him about couldn't be as bad as Tony Stark creating Ultron. Only he was wrong. Very wrong. 

Instead of being clad in the clothes he'd come to associate with her being at home in the Avengers base while working on her projects she was dressed in an outfit not too dissimilar from the doctor and nurses which had worked through war casualties and if not for the momentary flash he might have noticed the body lying on her table a lot sooner.

And when he did a distinct look of horror crossed his face until it gave way to accusation which landed quite firmly on Helen. 

Helen Cho wasn't a fan of autopsies. She wasn't a mortician, nor was she a fan of being stuck in a position where she wasn't actually able to help someone because she was too late. Not that she thought she would have been able to help the speedster anyway considering by the time his body was returned to the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, he had been dead for a couple of hours and was filled full of bullet holes that would have obliterated even the strongest of men. 

When she'd asked for Steve to come and see her, she had hoped that he would be open to talking to Pietro's sister, explaining that they couldn't release his body to her just yet, that part of her that was desperate to learn more about the human body and the human condition curious - hungry - to understand the changes that had been made to the twins at a genetic level, at a molecular level. But at the same time, here on her table was a dead young man, younger than her, having had his life cruelly taken from her and here she was with a scalpel in her hand, ready to slice into him to take samples of his body.

There was something interesting in his blood work that she'd identified already, she didn't know what it was, but there were elements that still seemed... alive when she was looking at them under the microscope, moving slowly, but still moving. She wondered if it was just some kind of contaminant, but she supposed she'd find out eventually as she lifted the scalpel - and offering a quiet apology to his grieving sister as she did - pressed it against Pietro's bare chest above the sternum.

That message had been sent to Steve using voice commands and she'd hoped that he wasn't already on his way so she could work out what she was supposed to say, how she was supposed to explain what was happening. The look of... well, she couldn't quite identify it when Steve's gaze fell on her, only that she squirmed underneath it was something that unsettled her greatly. 

"Steve," she started, knowing there was no way to approach what she was doing, "the Director wanted me to-" Whatever she was going to say next was lost, though, when she turned her gaze back to the corpse on the table. What she hadn't been expecting was for a slight trickle of blood that welled in the incision, that bubbled up under the blade and slowly dripped down across the pale skin. 

She quickly pulled the blade back and just stared at the bare chest for a moment before her eyes shot back up to Steve. She grabbed a nearby stethoscope and quickly reacted, the chest piece pressed above what should have been a still heart, only it wasn't. There was the faintest sound, but it was still there.

"Steve, he's still alive."

The mention of Fury caused Steve's eyes to narrow and his jaw to tick. Of course he'd ask the good Doctor to cut into some poor boy's body in the interest of furthering his own ends. What an idiot he was to think that perhaps the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D might give Fury a new perspective on the world. Just another example of Steve hoping for the best and being dashed at the last second. 

Though his train of thought was quickly derailed by the sudden realisation that Pietro was still alive, not dead and for a brief moment in time Steve felt a familiar flutter in his chest because sometimes all you needed was one miracle to keep fighting the good fight.

Without thinking and throwing all previous misgivings Steve closed the distance between himself and Helen, eyes tracking the trickle of blood. "Alive?" He repeated, brow creasing. "How is that even possible? We couldn't find a pulse." 

Steve instinctively reached for gauze while waiting for Helen's answer, ready to soak up the blood and clean the wound, old habits died hard or that's what people told him. 

"I don't know-" Helen said honestly, her own medical knowledge failing her- how could someone survive this and not be dead yet? "Press that against the incision," she ordered. She might have the title 'Doctor', but she wasn't a medical one. She wet her lower lip and hailed for a medical team to come down to the lab to make sure that he was immediately put into the correct care. 

She sighed, "The medical team'll be here in a minute. The pulse is faint, maybe it was fainter? Perhaps it's a side effect of his mutation, the experiments must have changed more than I first thought." Her mind was whirring. "This isn't necessarily a good thing." She was quick to add, "Not that he's alive, but that he can survive such an onslaught. I don't think you could have survived these wounds."

Helen listened to Pietro's faint heartbeat again, the quick flutter faint like a hummingbird's wings. Faint, so faint, but there. 

"This wasn't originally why I'd called you down," she confessed, keeping half an eye on the door for the medical team when they came in.

Steve cocked an eyebrow at Helen before simply doing as he was told, he didn't have an issue with taking orders from people when he knew they were the right kind of orders. The wrong kind? Well, he'd have a lot more to say. 

"I don't know about that, doc. I'm kinda hard to kill." It was lighthearted in view of their current predicament, but there were some things Steve had picked up from Bucky over the years of friendship even if those years had been over sooner than he cared for. "How can this not be a good thing?" He queried, lifting his gaze to search Helen's face. In Steve's mind Pietro had died protecting others and his death hadn't served any purpose except to drive sadness into the heart of his sister. A feeling Steve could relate to all too well. 

He snorted ever so slightly. "No?" He pulled his gaze away but only long enough to check that he had the gauze pressed down firmly enough. "Did it have something to do with you wanting me to talk to his sister about the fact Fury decided that he wanted to play scientist with her dead brother's body?" He might look dumb, but Steve was as sharp as a whistle. 

Helen pressed her lips together, feeling shaken from her own experience with Ultron and the brief time that she'd shared his genuinely terrifying vision for humanity and eagerly tried to help him with it. In the dark of the night, it haunted her, clogged her mind and stopped her from sleeping sometimes. Haunted her in a way she hadn't been expecting. She hadn't signed up for that, and anything she could do that would prevent anyone else going through that was something she could get behind. 

"I only mean if HYDRA's managed to make a whole army of people like him and his sister and even a machine gun can't really kill them... I don't know if we're equipped to fight an army like that." It was unnerving to her, as an ordinary human who had no super strength, suit of armour or godly powers (and physique...) to protect her.

She visibly flinched when Steve challenged her on why she'd called him down and couldn't look him in the eye when she nodded in response. "You seem to be the only person here who's able to talk to her." Helen didn't know why, considering what she'd heard from the field was that Wanda had used some kind of telepathic ability to render most of the team inept and trapped in their own nightmarish visions. She didn't know what Steve had seen - she only knew what Tony had seen and what the sceptre had shown her when it had been pressed against her heart and invading her mind - but it spoke wonders for his humanity that he still talked to her and spent time alone with her. Even after everything. "I had hoped you would be able to break it to her gently that we weren't yet able to release her brother's body to her. I was hoping you'd be rather more subtle," she added, a touch of a smile quirking the edge of her mouth.

When the medical team came in, it was two nurses, a doctor and five armed guards, one holding a taser and the rest of them holding automatic weapons, all looking very severe. Steve and Helen were both moved out of the way very quickly as the team fluttered around Pietro, wheeling him out on the gurney his body was on to take him away to intensive care to ensure that he survived. 

Helen rubbed her hands together, the latex of the gloves feeling restrictive and sweaty against her skin. "At least now you can give her good news - if we can give her any news at all," she added. Perhaps Fury would want this kept a secret as well. For as long as he could, anyway.

"And what if this so called HYDRA army is just a bunch of scared kids like Pietro and Wanda?" Steve challenged, not liking the way Helen's mind was working. He did however take a moment to gather his thoughts especially when he caught a trace of fear in Helen's eyes. Perhaps he was being too harsh on her for the decisions of others. It wasn't like her first thought was to shoot first and ask questions second, the Doctor was about helping people and saving lives. More than he could say for most people. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, no point in jumping to conclusions before we know what we're up against." His voice was softer, less abrasive, but still quite certain.

He shot the armed guards a look as they were all but shoved them out of the way, eyes tracking Pietro until he couldn't see him any longer. Honestly? Steve didn't trust him in the hands of anybody under Fury's command, especially after he'd walked in on Helen with a scalpel in her hand. "Subtle? Me?" He asked, tipping his head to give a ghost of a smile before he simply folded his arms across his chest. "There's no trick to talking to her, doc. She's just a girl that's lost a lot and turned to the wrong people for help. We all do things we didn't think ourselves capable of to protect the things and people we love." 

"No secrets," Steve said rather firmly. "That's what got us into this mess to begin with, by people keeping secrets." He levelled Helen with blue eyes. "I won't lie for Fury."

Helen drew in a slow breath as Steve spoke to her, putting an opinion forward she supposed she hadn't considered all that deeply. Pietro and Wanda didn't seem all that dangerous, not to look at them, but they were - in effect - weaponised. Did Wanda being part of SH.I.E.L.D make her less dangerous because they thought that they could control her? Would they put her on the Index and monitor her? A gun was still dangerous in the hands of an experienced solider. 

"So what are you going to tell her? That he's alive? I doubt Fury'll let her see him either way. Not until he-" _determines that he isn't a threat_. It was unspoken but it hung in the air. "He wants to understand how they work. How we can reverse it."

Steve was silent for a moment before he angled his head to look at Helen. "Last I checked Fury wasn't the one giving the orders around here." And he wasn't, not since S.H.I.E.L.D had fallen and the Avengers had carved their way across the world in search of the sceptre and other items of interest to HYDRA. "And I get that he wants to know how Strucker did what he did and how dangerous they are, but they fought beside us, stood with us against Ultron. That's gotta mean something." Hell, the Maximoff twins could have scattered to the wind, Pietro certainly could have taken Wanda with him, but they hadn't. 

Belatedly he realised he was still holding the bloody gauze and Steve moved to dispose of it. "They're people, Helen. Not just Strucker's experiments. The moment we lose the sight of that is the moment we start to think like HYDRA." 

"I know- believe me, Wanda- she did something which released the... hold that had me working on the Cradle for Ultron. I just-" She wrung her hands together and then carefully pulled the gloves off, disposing of them in a bin marked for potentially hazardous waste. Couldn't be too careful. 

She lifted a shoulder, "Even if he isn't in charge, everyone's still doing what he's telling them to." She let out a wry chuckle and then shook her head. "I just think we- I don't know what I think. I should probably report this to Fury officially, before the medics do." Helen eyed Steve for a long moment. "Did you want to go and check on him?" She'd noticed how Steve's eyes had lingered on the door when the Enhanced had been removed.

When Helen struggled Steve reached over and squeezed her arm, reassuringly present and steadfast like always. He knew she wasn't a soldier and she shouldn't have been in harm's way, but the innocent were quite frequently the ones who suffered during a time of war. His touch lingered for a moment before it fell away, fingers curling around his sides as his gaze strayed back to the door. "Well, guess I'm going to have to do something about that." Fury wasn't calling the shots even if he acted like it, they'd come this far without him and so far they hadn't nearly caused the end of the world. So far so good.

"Do me a favour when you do?" Steve asked as he made his way towards the door. "Let Fury know where to find me if he wants to discuss what I'm about to do next."

And by that he of course meant going to find Pietro, making sure he was being taken care of rather than being kept under armed guard and then go let his sister know that her brother was still alive despite the enemy's best attempts.

"I will," Helen said softly, curling her arms around herself for the briefest moment of self comfort before she visibly pulled herself together to go and talk to Nick Fury, not quite the Head of S.H.I.E.L.D anymore, but still too important not to be informed of these kinds of decisions. After all, he was the one that bought them all back together again. "Thanks, Steve."


End file.
